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In focus: The future of money

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The way money changes hands has been evolving for hundreds of years, with businesses always keen to facilitate new, innovative ways for consumers to part hands with their cash. However the last couple years have seen exponential growth in this area, with Bitcoin, Apple Pay, M-Pesa and local currencies - to name a few - all transforming how we move our money around.

Over the next month we’ll be taking a close look at the trends which will define money and payment over the next few years, what it means for entrepreneurs, the potential pitfalls and how we could all stand to benefit from this disruption.

Levchin’s new start-up, online lending platform Affirm, was born out of the dire need to revolutionise the lending industry, which still uses a decades old system to determine who’s at risk and how much each potential borrower can – or cannot – borrow.

The way that we interact with money is changing – and it’s going to keep changing over the next five, 10, 20 years. This got designers at London design firm, Method, thinking about what would happen if all assumptions about how money should behave were removed...

The Brixton Pound is one of 250 local currencies in the world and there’s an estimated B£70,000 currently in circulation (electronic and paper notes combined). Some are sceptical of the local currency phenomenon. But shouldn’t we be embracing these niche tenders? Here are five good reasons why we should...

When something that could be greatly improved hasn’t changed for a long time, the easy thing to do is get frustrated and presume it can’t be changed. The smart question to ask yourself is how you can change it.

This year, cashless payments overtook cash payments for the first time in the UK. Globally, there are now over 100 million active mobile money users, a figure that has more than tripled over just two years. The revolution in payments technologies has arrived...

Cryptocurrency, specifically Bitcoin, has the potential to shift the economic disparity between the west and the developing world. As Mark Zuckerberg attempts to bring connectivity and WiFi to our entire planet via Internet.org, and Google seeks the same lofty goal with Project Loon, the question still remains - is it enough?

One of the biggest innovations in the payment space this year has been Visa PayWave, which has facilitated over 75 million transactions since January and is over seven times faster than chip and pin. Here we take a look at its impact…

Cashless society is something that could well become a reality in the near future with the introduction of technologies such as Apple Pay, but it’s something that many developing countries are already achieving with significantly less sophisticated technology.

I’m always intrigued to observe how the younger generation use technology on a day to day basis to catch up with their friends on Facebook, watch their favourite TV show on their mobile device or find out the closest pub using the latest phone app.

We are living in the on-demand economy. We want our taxis on-demand, our food on-demand and our movies on-demand. Sadly, for small businesses, this does not translate to getting paid on time. And in a market where cash flow sometimes determines whether a start-up will make it to the next month or not, late payment could be fatal.

The world of money has been slow to innovate - not much has happened in the last 30 to 40 years. The ATM was the last major innovation and since then, although banks have been avid adopters of new technology for their own internal needs, little else has changed.

With hackers and cyber criminals using ever more sophisticated methods to gain our precious data and evade conventional security processes, increasing our financial security has become an even more urgent matter.

Imagine if one day you woke up and found that your bankcard and all cash in your wallet had just disintegrated. Making your way to the shops, you noticed customers dancing in exchange for milk, and others furiously beading necklaces to earn enough food to feed the family for a week.

Ottoman admiral and cartographer, Piri Reis compiled the Piri Reis map as a world map in 1513. This map was compiled with military intelligence and now serves as a demonstration of the exploration of the New World.

"Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it. You can influence it. You can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that you’ll never be the same again." - Steve Jobs

Think about what’s in your wallet. We’ll even give you a minute to go find it and take a look. You’ve probably got a little cash, some credit and debit cards, a photo ID or two and maybe business cards and photographs of your family and friends.